Posts Tagged ‘Matt Reeves’
Monday, March 14th, 2022
FUTURE SHOCK is a 1994 horror(ish) anthology, it seems very made-for-cable, though it apparently was made-for-video. Or at least as a compilation it was – I believe it’s made from two pre-existing short films tied following a new story and a wraparound.
The connective material stars none other than Martin Kove, who was in a prolific post-KARATE-KID period of his career – that year he also appeared in WYATT EARP, WYATT EARP: RETURN TO TOMBSTONE (yes, a TV movie that came out the same year as the better known one), ENDANGERED, SAVAGE LAND, GAMBLER V: PLAYING FOR KEEPS, DEATH MATCH, CAGNEY & LACEY: THE RETURN, plus a Burke’s Law and a Kung Fu: The Legend Continues. Here he’s rocking Swayze/Gibson style long hair, but playing a mostly buttoned down character, Dr. Langdon (yes, THE DA VINCI CODE was originally written as FUTURE SHOCK fan fiction but Kove refused to be in the movies because he knew they were gonna be fuckin boring, that’s why they almost didn’t make them and obviously regretted when they did [citation not necessary]), a psychiatrist who uses virtual reality to help his patients face their fears. (You see? In the form of little Twilight-Zone-ish short stories.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Amanda Foreman, anthology, Bill Paxton, Brion James, David DuBos, Eric Parkinson, Greg Grunberg, J.J. Abrams, James Gray, James Karen, Martin Kove, Matt Reeves, Oley Sassone, Richard Hatem, Rick Rossovich, Sydney Lassick, Tim Doyle, Vivian Schilling
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 7 Comments »
Friday, March 11th, 2022
(there will be spoils)
Yes it’s true, comic book super heroes hold too much of a monopoly on movies and television right now. I agree, we get it, but also I enjoy the genre. And of all the ongoing super hero franchises the one I get most excited about is Batman.
Tim Burton’s 1989 BATMAN was a foundational movie for me, and I believe it kicked off the first real era of comic book movies, since SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE didn’t have many riding its coattails. I don’t think it could’ve happened with another character. There was something about the zeitgeist at that time, that the world was ready to see Batman on screen, and the marketing ingeniously took advantage of that. More importantly, the specific psychological and visual qualities of the “dark” Super Friend and his evil clown nemesis attracted Burton and gave him a weirdly perfect canvas on which to fuse his particular talents with blockbuster filmmaking, and create something that felt simultaneously of our past and completely new.
Because that was the first one, a distinct, stylized look was an expected element of comic book movies throughout the ‘90s, paving the way for the likes of DICK TRACY, THE CROW, TANK GIRL… I’d even throw in gaudier digital age ones like SPAWN and THE MASK for at least having their own looks. And Burton’s followup, BATMAN RETURNS, is still one of the most beautiful looking comic book movies to date. It only makes sense, being adaptations of an illustrated medium, but it’s a tradition somewhat neglected in the era of shared universes and realistic CG. I think THE BATMAN is one of the ones that brings it back. It looks stunning, and completely unlike other movies of the same genre, or even about the same character. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andy Serkis, Barry Keoghan, Colin Farrell, DC Comics, Greig Fraser, James Chinlund, Jeffrey Wright, John Turturro, Matt Reeves, Michael Giacchino, Paul Dano, Peter Craig, Robert Pattinson, Zoe Kravitz
Posted in Action, Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews | 137 Comments »
Thursday, July 20th, 2017
Director Matt Reeves, in his two sequels to the prequel to the PLANET OF THE APES series, has achieved some sort of cinematic miracle. I don’t think we as a society have properly acknowledged how incredible and unlikely these movies are. These are prebootquel-sequel-summer-event-special-effects-movies that are bleak, heavy and emotional, yet fun to watch. They feel like they’re based in the real world, yet they have us accepting apes that can speak English – not in a BABE talking-animal-movie type of way, but in a “some of them have evolved enough to learn how to do it” sort of way. Tentative, with odd rhythms, and economical use of words. It’s like a trick that they’re still mastering, putting great effort into each syllable, having to catch their breath between words. There’s still something creepy about this demonstration of intelligence from animals that are in a war with humans like us. Yet Reeves gets us to root for them – for their survival, for their moral choices.
It’s almost beside the point that somehow Reeves films a bunch of dudes in weird suits out in the woods and Weta turns them into photo-realistic animated characters. Most of the main characters and extras are computer generated, but I just think of it as live action while I’m watching it. Remember when it seemed like the Achilles heel of motion capture would always be the creepy, doll-like eyes? Well, here we have Caesar (played by the Marlon Brando of mo-cap, Andy Serkis), a performance that’s at least 25% intense stare-down. It’s as if all the soul and humanity missing from all the eyeballs in THE POLAR EXPRESS were set aside to load into his. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andy Serkis, Karin Konoval, Mark Bomback, Matt Reeves, Steve Zahn, Terry Notary, Toby Kebbell, Woody Harrelson
Posted in Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 30 Comments »
Tuesday, July 14th, 2015
I know the internet reminds us that every day is the 20th anniversary of something or other, and that’s not always a good thing. There is too much nostalgia, and too many factoids. We need to learn how to live in the present, otherwise what the hell anniversary are we gonna celebrate 20 years from today? But today, my friends, is an important one: July 14th, 1995 was the day the world was gifted UNDER SIEGE 2: DARK TERRITORY.
I think you know how I feel about this movie. It stands as one of Seagal’s best big studio movies, one of the great sequels in the history of action, and one of the best DIE HARD rip offs. It’s a cool, accessible Seagal with a great supporting cast (especially the villains) doing enjoyable special-effects-based spectacle action while also spreading the gospel of choking and wrist-snapping. I’m not sure I can write a new review of it, since of course I wrote a whole chapter about it for my book Seagalogy: The Ass-Kicking Films of Steven Seagal and talked a little more about it in my Cinefamily Journal last year. So instead, to honor the occasion, let’s take a look at some of the key players and consider how much they’ve accomplished in the two decades since. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brian Helgeland, Eric Bogosian, Geoff Murphy, Jonathan Banks, Katherine Heigl, Matt Reeves, Morris Chestnut, Newton, Richard Hatem, Seagalogy, Steven Seagal, trains
Posted in Blog Post (short for weblog), Seagal | 31 Comments »
Monday, July 14th, 2014
Review of the Movie of The Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
When there’s no more room in Hell, the apes will ride the horses. This new PLANET OF THE APES series has decided to start titling in Romerical order, so #2 is DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES. Sounds good, but since they’ve used the title we can now rule out a future chapter with apes living in an abandoned shopping mall and then they get attacked by biker apes. Also, if this is DAWN OF THE then where is the Hare Krishna ape?
2011’s RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES was exciting because it looked like a total joke and then it caught me with its touching and nuanced story of the super-intelligent ape Caesar, wedged inside a dumb sci-fi story with one dimensional human characters. DAWN loses the advantage of surprise but gains the advantage of building off the first one to create a way better movie. They wisely skip ahead 10 years to when the human population has been decimated by the virus and Caesar has led the apes to build a village in the Redwoods. They’re nearing an Ewok level of advancement with wooden treehouses and spears, war paint, a few crowns and jewels made of teeth. No hoods or hang gliders yet. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andy Serkis, Gary Oldman, Jason Clarke, Keri Russell, Mark Bomback, Matt Reeves, Toby Kebbell
Posted in Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 42 Comments »
Thursday, February 3rd, 2011
Ah shit, I hate it when this happens. I’m about to write a review for a sequel, or in this case a remake, and before I get started I figure I should go back and read what I wrote about the first one so I don’t repeat myself too much or forget something important. But it turns out I never wrote a review of the Swedish kid-befriends-vampire movie LET THE RIGHT ONE IN. And now I’m gonna review the American version of the Swedish movie everybody loves without reviewing the first one, and everybody’s gonna think I’m an asshole.
So please imagine I wrote a brilliant, in some ways moving and definitely mind-expanding and film criticism re-inventing review about how it was a very original and well made movie, I liked how the kids talked like kids and it didn’t really feel like any movie I’d seen before, pretty good, etc. Way to go, Swedes.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: American remake, Chloe Grace Moretz, good remakes, Kodi Smit-Mcphee, Matt Reeves, remakes, vampires
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 80 Comments »
